Anchorpoint Financial began phase-one Beta Access for its HKDAP stablecoin on August 12, initially limited to institutional distributors and professional investors, marking the first time either of Hong Kong's two licensed stablecoin issuers has moved from regulatory approval to an actual live transaction.
The rollout is narrow by design. HashKey and OSL are Anchorpoint's first issuer-authorised distributors: HashKey has completed an initial client mint-and-redemption transaction covering both fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, while OSL is providing distribution, liquidity, exchange, trading, and settlement support. Anchorpoint has disclosed no figures on circulation, distinct users, or sustained transaction volume, and wider retail access could begin by the end of 2026, subject to market conditions. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority received 36 applications for stablecoin issuer licenses and granted the first two — to Anchorpoint, a joint venture of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT, and Animoca Brands, and to HSBC — on April 10, choosing two of only three institutions authorized to print physical Hong Kong dollar banknotes. Under Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance, which took effect August 1, 2025, issuers must maintain reserve assets segregated from their own funds and equal to at least 100% of circulation, honor valid redemption requests at par "as soon as practicable," and, for non-bank licensees, hold at least HK$25 million in paid-up capital.
Blockhead's own coverage of the license announcement in April was pointed about what the choice of licensees signaled. In a piece titled "Hong Kong's Stablecoin Revolution Will Be Whitelisted," Blockhead argued that handing the first licenses to HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led venture — rather than opening the field to crypto-native issuers — meant Hong Kong "has not opened a door for the existing stablecoin market. It has built a parallel track, controlled at every point, and given the keys to the institutions that have always held them." That framing was written four months before any HKD stablecoin actually moved money. The Beta Access launch is the first real test of whether that skepticism holds up in practice, or whether the tightly controlled rollout produces a genuinely useful settlement instrument once wider access arrives.
Anchorpoint's B2B2C structure — institutional distributors first, retail later, no public circulation data yet — reflects a regulator that has moved cautiously at every stage since Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands, and HKT first announced the joint venture in February 2025, entered HKMA's stablecoin sandbox that July, and formally applied for a license the same day the Ordinance took effect. Eighteen months of process now culminate in a beta phase that still discloses none of the metrics — circulation, user counts, transaction volume — that would let outside observers judge whether HKDAP is actually being used, or merely technically live. That gap is likely to persist until the retail phase Anchorpoint has scheduled for later this year, which is when the token's real commercial test — attracting demand outside crypto-native trading use cases — actually begins.
